


It Will Have Been

by deluxemycroft



Series: Ouroboros [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Abusive family dynamics, Gen, Mind Control, Mind Meld, Mind Reading, Service Submission, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: Loki takes.Clint gives.It wasn't always easy to be Loki's, but it was always worth it.





	It Will Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> just a quick clint's POV of some of on&on. i can only imagine how little sense this would make without reading the two prior fics in this series, so please do read those first

The very first thought in his head that wasn’t his own was, _Hmmm. Tastes like semen._

It scared him so bad he fell out of his chair and hit his head on the corner of the coffee table. 

Then, of course, when his poor wife thought he was having a seizure and tried to help him up and his kids were panicking, his mind filled with such a rush that he vomited. There was a voice inside his head, something that wasn’t his own, speaking in a tongue he could barely understand, and then like pages in a book, memories flicked past him. 

He could not stop from getting sucked in. 

He looked around a vast forest. The trees were taller than anything he’d seen in his entire life. He blinked and looked down at his hands, but they were not his own hands, and this was not his skin. His body, however, continued to walk. 

He looked up, and through the trees, far ahead, a man walked, his long blond hair and red cape catching the sun. 

The memory faded and his body contorted as he tried to escape. Laura had laid him flat on the couch and he just bolted. He ran outside and stumbled down the porch steps and fell to his knees, hands digging into the dirt as he panted. What the fuck was going on?

He was suddenly swamped with satisfaction that was not his own, and the strange sense of his mind trying to push outside his skull. Beyond the satisfaction, there was a deep, desperate note of panic, of _Do you see? Do you see what he made me do?_ He clapped his hands to his head, trying to keep his brain in, and suddenly, he wasn’t on Earth anymore. 

He looked around. He was in some huge room, bigger than a football stadium, and the entire place was covered in gold. And there were _thousands_ of people, all cheering. Cheering for him? Someone raised up his hand and he looked over to see a huge man with long blond hair and a kind face and muscles bigger than Clint’s head, and he was beaming. 

There was a deep pit of hate in his heart for this man. Whoever this was, he had done something _terrible_. Many terrible things, in fact. 

The man suddenly changed and his hair disappeared, one of his eyes changing color, and he stepped back up the throne. 

Whoever’s body he was in, he went to his knees. It was the most natural thing he’d ever done. The man, the King upon the throne, looked down at him and whispered his name. 

Loki. 

He managed to pull himself out of the vision or the alternate universe or whatever it was and he vomited again, spitting up into the grass. A gentle hand brushed over the back of his neck and he scrambled away from it, realizing after a second that it was just Laura. 

“Clint,” she said, and held out a glass of water. 

His name was Clint. Fuck. Clint. Right. He took the glass of water and gagged in the first sip, but drank it down. “I think I need to go to bed,” he told her, and Laura helped him up, taking him to bed. 

Who the hell was Loki?

* * *

He slept for seventeen hours. 

He relived about every single past life a guy could have. In every single one of them, he belonged to Loki. Thousands of lives. Even in the ones where Loki never came to Earth, he would toss and turn and _yearn_ and he would never be complete, and he would dream of green eyes and sharp hands taking him apart. Sometimes, when Loki did come to Earth, he would not find Clint, and he would still be alone. Often, he did not have the Scepter, and he and Loki passed each other by like ships in the night. Or Loki would find him, and Clint’s knees would fold, but Loki didn’t _understand_ , not in the way Clint meant it. 

There were two times it worked. 

The very first time, where Loki pressed the tip of the Scepter to his chest and smiled at him. Where he said, _You have heart,_ and his mind shattered. _I am his_ , he thought, and that thought changed his trajectory forever. _I am his_ , he thought, and he was no longer his own.

There was one other time. Loki had escaped his imprisonment in Asgard, had fallen to Earth, landed in a massive crater out in a field. It happened to be a field that Clint and his wife owned. He found Loki, of course. He pulled him out of the crater and pushed his hair off his face and his heart went _Ah. It’s him. I’ve come home._

He waited until Loki woke up, and when he did, he closed his eyes and he belonged to him. Long fingers pet his hair and Loki murmured, _Yes, I missed you too._

Then, Thor came crashing down. He killed both of them in one great mighty blow. But he could not kill the bond between them. He could shatter it, he could crumple it, he could pull Loki through dimension after dimension until it was only a single hanging thread stretching beyond the cosmos, but he could not kill it. He could not kill the piece of Clint’s heart that ultimately was not his own. 

Be it the Scepter or Loki’s own machinations, he was not his own. 

He traveled through every life he lived before, every man he was, and learned about himself. Always searching, always looking, never complete. Time worked in such a way that even in the lives he lived before Loki pressed the Scepter to his chest, he still belonged to him. 

Often, he fought it. He could feel the ache in his heart and the emptiness in his soul and he would sleep and dream of a man that would pet his hair and promise him good things and lie to him and he would wake up and whisper, _No. Not today. Not me_. And he would not listen to the tug in his chest, and he would not listen to the loneliness that crept up upon him even when he was not alone. He was a fighter. Too damn stubborn to give in. But even when he fought, even when he did not or could not give in, he still _wanted_. He would marry his wife and hold his children close and he would still be the loneliest man in the entire galaxy. But he still fought, because he did not know what else to do. 

Often, he did not fight. But there was never an answer to the question. There was always who, but never a name. Never _Loki_. 

More often, he was angry. He was missing something, someone, and he was pissed about it. He would think of ways to get back at whoever was haunting his thoughts, the being whose hand he could feel touching the edge of his mind, and he would think, _How dare he. How dare he act like he can know me, own me._

How dare he. 

Not until he stepped into the god’s life and walked through 1500 years of pain and lies and _hate_ and wanting to die but never having the courage and always, always being less than those around him. 

He watched his own life and then was given the gift of Loki’s life. It was a gift wrapped in chains and shackles and he felt burdened with the weight of it all. 

He spent his life on his knees, Loki did. They ached constantly, always bruised, always yet another marker of his unending servitude. He spent the first few decades attempting to create a more effective bruise salve, but Thor found out and destroyed all of it, for no reason other than it was something to change Loki, to make him more comfortable. 

Loki spent half his life suffocating, trapped under the weight of Mjolnir or whatever was heavy enough for Thor to pin him down and teach him _This is your place. You are lesser than I._ He would sit in the bath in the dark and take in great breaths, reminding himself of what a full lung of air felt like. Clint hyperventilated and gasped and clawed at his neck and his chest and would kill for just a puff of air. Loki fought it, at first, but even Loki could not fight forever. 

Then, Thanos. 

The great looming figure over his life, eclipsed only by Thor. The one great threat that still could make him shudder at the sound of his name. 

Thor spent their entire lives training Loki to kneel to Thanos, intentional or otherwise. He did not know how to _not_ kneel. So he broke. 

Clint broke with him. 

But for all of Loki’s strength, he had lived on his knees. 

Clint had lived on his feet. 

So when Loki knelt, he stood. If there was one thing Clint knew how to do, it was keep standing up after he’d been pushed down. Perhaps it was only a memory, perhaps none of it was real, but he stood and he watched and he could not stop anything from happening, but he was there. 

For 1500 years, he was there. 

When his eyes opened, he did not know his own name. 

He did not recognize the woman at his bedside. 

It all came back to him, but Clint never forgot the feeling of knowing nothing of himself other than _I am his_. Of being on one knee before him and saying, _I am here, and I am yours, and I am not going anywhere._

It took time to learn how to live when there were two minds in his head. Longer than he’d like to admit, because he’d belonged to Loki for longer than he could even fathom, which meant he should be prepared for whatever came his way. But he was not. He was only a man, after all. 

It was not easy to be Loki’s. They were separated by galaxies, separated by time and space and he could feel Thor’s breath on the back of his neck and even for all his strength, he was terrified of him, terrified of what the King could bring down upon him. Both of them were scared of Thor. Perhaps, because he was weak and human and had no powers, he was even more scared. 

But Clint knew how to push up his chin and grit his teeth and not back down. He was too damn stubborn. But, at the same time, he floundered without control. He had long been _I just do what I’m told_. Even when he fought, he gave in. There were few battles on the ground he could not win, even fewer in the air, but he was always waiting for the voice in his ear to tell him to stand down. An attack dog on a leash. For all of Clint’s stubbornness and steel-strength, his core was warm and soft. Loki was the opposite, being on his knees, often perceived as outwardly weak but there was a steel cable in him that stretched to the heavens, that would never bend no matter how hard Thor leaned on him. 

Loki was smart, far smarter than Clint himself. He had a running commentary on everything that was happening around him, an index of what he was experiencing that could eventually be used against those around him. He reminded Clint of a trapped cat, bristling whenever anyone came too close. Always waiting for the next person to hurt him. 

He tried to get to him. Clint had never heard of her, and Thor hadn’t been banished to Earth in any of his memories, but Loki remembered her name. 

There was a first life, the life that all other lives arched off of. Life One. Where Clint became his and was already his and would be his, and also where Loki had the only moment of freedom in his long life, was able to choose his own death for the first and last time. Thor was banished to Earth, where he met Jane Foster. 

Loki remembered her. His memories of his previous lives grew fainter every day, but Clint could step back into them and rummage through them like old books. So he tracked her down, sent her about 200 emails about trying to get to Asgard, before she called him and told him it was impossible. She had never finished her Bridge. Thor had never gone to Earth, never confirmed her theories, and her life’s work was all for nothing. Clint tried to give her information, but she stopped responding. 

He knew there was a jump port somewhere just outside of the stratosphere, but he did not know where it led and he had no way to get there. 

SHIELD was no help. He had monthly physiatric checkups and the doc was worried about him, even though he’d never mentioned Loki to anyone besides Laura. 

That had been an interesting conversation. He’d been on leave for a week and had waited until the kids were in school and he’d sat her down and explained, _Hey, remember how when we got married and I was only one guy? Well, I’m still one guy, but I’m in someone else’s head now, and I think it’s been like this for a lot longer than I realized. And I think he’s coming to Earth soon and I don’t think there’s a force on Earth or off it that can stop me from going to him._

And she’d said, _What?_

And he’d said, _Sorry, did you say something?_

And his wife had stared at him and stared at him and Clint had had the startling realization: _She might leave me over this. I’ll miss her_. And then he’d chastised himself for not doing better, for not loving her better, but hadn’t he done his best? 

Laura had always supported him. She never had a problem with his work for SHIELD, never had a problem with not actually knowing what his real job was other than a vague hand-wave of Spy, and he tried to give her the same. He tried, he truly did. A home, kids, a secure life away from all the shit and piss and death of his real job. He’d given her everything she’d asked. Except coming home; that was something he couldn’t do, not yet. SHIELD would bring him to Loki, he just knew it. All he had to do was walk towards his inevitable destiny.

So, even in this, even in _Hey, hon, I’m irrevocably bound to a god from another planet and I’m not even sure he knows about me yet but I can feel that every day drags me closer to him and I am running to him as fast as I can but also I love you_ , she looked him in the eye and after he promised her that he wasn’t lying, she asked, _Well? What are you waiting for? Go bring him home._

They came to Earth not long after that. 

Loki did not know him. 

Clint did not know how to belong when he was not known. 

He didn’t tell anyone. He just told Laura he was working on it, tried to distract Nat when she noticed his mood was different, did his best to mislead the SHIELD psychiatrist anywhere other than _I have a god in my head and I need to worship him but how do I tell him when he does not even look at me?_

They went on a few missions together. Cap and Loki always paired up, but Clint watched his back. Sometimes his mind trembled when Loki looked at him because he could _feel_ his apathy. There was an undercurrent of something else, something that Clint could never quite name, but it almost felt like wistfulness. 

Clint wanted to tell him. 

When he saw Loki the first time, when he and Thor came down through the Bifrost and walked into Stark’s tower like they were meant to be greeted like royalty, Clint’s breath had caught in his throat. He’d wanted to go to his knees right then and there. He’d seen _home._

It built to the point where he thought it would be funny to reveal his big secret by exposing the lie. 

He’d been bitter without even realizing it until the words fell out of his mouth. He had not even realized how unfair it felt to be locked up in Loki’s head and to not be _known_. He’d been _I am his_ for so long that being his without being _known_ was worse than not being his at all.

He remembered Laura saying, _Bring him home_ , and he told Loki that he’d done him a disservice, and to begin to make it up to him by meeting his kids. His kids, who he’d told so many stories about Loki to. It felt good to get one over on him. 

But none of that was important, not really. Not when Clint would wake up some nights and think, _Who am I?_ And he would have to wait to remember his own name. Or he would turn over in bed and think, _Who is this woman? Where is my brother?_ And then he would blink and his wife would sigh in her sleep and he would fall in love with her all over again. 

It got to be too much sometimes. It got to the point where he just wanted to be alone in his own damn head again. But he couldn’t imagine his life without Loki. It would be like trying to live without the entire left half of his body. Or his right half. He wasn’t picky. It would just suck. He was fairly sure he’d die if Loki managed to break the bond between them. 

It wasn’t like he was _mad_ about having unfettered, completely unrestricted access to Loki’s mind. It just got overwhelming.

He’d take being overwhelmed sometimes than be alone again. It’d felt weird, at first, felt awful, but now his head was so crammed full that he couldn’t imagine being alone again.

Loki, against all hope, _understood._

Loki looked at him and understood. He saw Clint for who he was and what he’d done and for nothing beyond that. He expected nothing more than what Clint was willing to give, and Clint was willing to give him everything. 

It was difficult, sometimes, to belong so fully to someone else. He was not his own. He was not Clint Barton who came before, who belonged to his wife and kids and to his job and his own life. But that wasn’t his life anymore, and it would never be his life again.

So he grew used to it. He’d always been adaptable. But it was hard, sometimes.

He could take life being hard, as long as he belonged. As long as he was _known._

**Author's Note:**

> please follow me:  
> twitter: @whenhedied  
> tumblr: @deluxemycroft
> 
> please leave kudos and comments, it means a lot to me! thanks for reading! there are a few more one shots in this series, so please subscribe to this series


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